~ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you … John 13:34

De dignitate vitae humanae

Parallel to the struggle surrounding poor Alfie, a few days ago Ealing Council imposed a buffer zone, preventing anti-abortion (and pro-choice) campaigners from standing within 100 feet of an abortion clinic in Ealing.

Liberal reports emphasise the discomfort caused to women who patronise this establishment. They ought to consider the broader context of this discomfort. Alleging that women should not have to experience this discomfort presupposes that women who use this clinic are doing nothing wrong. Authors of this pieces in this vein arguably should be upfront with their presuppositions.

I will state now that I oppose abortion. It was, until relatively recently, the standard view of most populations that people should feel bad about doing something wrong. If abortion is wrong, then women should feel bad about committing abortion. If a council bans protestors from standing within 100 feet of an abortion establishment on the grounds that it will make patrons feel discomfort, that council is committed to the position that abortion is acceptable. If that is what the councillors feel, they should be open about it and submit themselves to public debate on the matter.

This is the least they should do, and here is why: the gravity of the implications of the opposing side’s positions is great. If, as I maintain, abortion is the destruction of a human for personal reasons, and such destruction is categorically wrong, then it should be opposed. Abortion is particularly heinous because a child is as innocent as a human being can be: therefore an offence against a child is greater than an offence against a sin-riddled adult.

It will be no defence for a council to claim that metaphysics lie beyond its remit or that the state permits abortion. A council is made up of councillors, human beings who, by virtue of being human beings, have free will, which in turn imposes upon them moral obligations. A council, even if neither law nor equity say so, stands in a fiduciary relationship to the citizens under its aegis. The rate-payer entrusts money to the council (and money is a proxy for the time and labour of the individual, which are his personal property) on the understanding that the council is to use it for his best interest. The council is to act in a position of loyalty to the rate-payer, bound not to take advantage of opportunities that belong to the rate-payer and not willingly to expose the rate-payer to things that are harmful to him.

Suppose councillors protest that they must not think on metaphysical matters. They are responsible for creating bye-laws and upholding the laws of the land in their co-operation with the police. Law presupposes metaphysical commitments: we cannot engage with law without metaphysics. To the extent that a council is involved with law, it is involved with metaphysics. They have no defence unless they can show that a particular branch of metaphysics is beyond their remit. As things stand under English law, the health and safety of people in the council’s area is within the council’s remit (consider, for example, sanitation).

Blindly observing the law is not a defence either, because it does not entail that one cannot campaign to change the law. Councils and Parliaments have the power to change statute and do exercise this power: they repeal, amend, and expand legislation. All of these actions rely on the concept of change and presuppose that a body may legitimately change its opinion on matters as new arguments and data are adduced. The council is not obligated by law to impose this buffer zone: it could have chosen not to. The council, were it so inclined, could have commissioned a report on abortion and submitted this to Parliament for consideration.

As things continue in this vein I find myself aggrieved that so much of society seems to have abandoned the principles of individual human dignity and rights. Britain was once great and a champion of these things, not so now.

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30 thoughts on “De dignitate vitae humanae”

The legal system is in shambles in the Western World which is amazing since we are the ones that developed the idea of a just legal system replete with individual rights for each individual.

For a baby in the womb, our courts treat the baby as a non-entity without rights. Yet this very same legal system will jail you for disturbing the sand where a sea turtle has laid her eggs. It is a serious offense. You must stay away from any site that has been marked as a hatching site. So the legal system sees the eggs of a sea turtle as deserving protection under the law because the developed turtle is considered an ‘endangered species’. But an undeveloped human baby gets no such rights. The dignity of the human person might ought to be reformulated as the dignity of the loggerhead turtles . . . for they have more protection under the law than an undeveloped human being. Astonishingly hypocritical.

God is allowing us to live in an upside down world of our own making. It is making us sick. We are losing our connections to one another and we are adrift in a world without meanings or changing meanings. We live on anti-depressives and anti-anxiety medicines. This type of dysfunctional reality is one that will reap its own rewards not merely at the final judgement but immediately upon the societies that we live in.

Indeed. I don’t know how we can win this war either…I know the Bible tells us about spiritual warfare and giving reasons for what we believe and living by example, but I have become so demoralized. I’m no saint, so perhaps it is hypocritical for me to say so, but sometimes I feel like Jeremiah warning about the Babylonians – “They’re coming, they’re coming” – and nobody is listening.

I know what you mean. A world that values a turtles eggs more than an unborn human baby is a world that has its values totally out of place. In fact it becomes almost valueless since it is whatever anyone wants to make sacred and what one wishes to make banal.

Thou Shalt Not Kill apparently applies to that which we want to apply it to . . . even if not human. Maybe our legal systems ought to learn a bit more about logic for at this point it appears they are simply throwing darts to make their decisions.

I blame the legislature as well as the judges. I prefer the American system to our own these days, although yours too has been damaged by the Supreme Court. You just can’t win with these people, they keep shifting the goalposts (do you have that expression in the US?). There’s nowhere to run to either: even Canada has been infiltrated by the left.

Even there many of our beloved Catholic universities have lost the Catholicity. They no longer deserve to use the word as part of their description. Everything is crumbling around us and I think God is sending a message. We need to get back to doing the honorable things in our society and shunning the things which are not.

Sic transit Gloria…yes, I don’t know how you do that with Catholicism: if the traditional believers try to pull away, they will be called schismatics. If they stay in, they will be scandalised by the corrupt forces among the clergy. It is a great shame there aren’t more churches and chapels ministered by the Society of Saint Peter. I fear if the faithful made requests of the bishops, they would just fall on deaf ears in a lot of cases.

That is the problem facing my young friend that I have spoken of here. He seeks a traditional Catholic priesthood and is finding it very difficult to make up his mind where to go. For the bishops treat such societies with contempt and you can hardly find a Novus Ordo priest who will even write a letter of recommendation for a candidate who wants to join such a society.

He has my sympathy – it is a vicious circle also, because the more you demoralize a traditionalist, the harder it is for him to maintain a calm demeanour. Then, on a moment when he is less charitable than he might normally be, traditionalism itself gets tarred by critics as tending towards pharisaism and bitter recriminations. I think, in general, Christian denominations are experiencing a crisis of vocations for a whole host of reasons.

The good news is that the traditionalist societies’ seminaries are filled to the brim with candidates and the competition is rather keen to get into them. Not so for the diocesan seminaries. In fact just since Francis we have seen a drop in ordinations from these seminaries of about 25 per cent. I just read that yesterday I think. It is a statistic that the Church ought to be paying attention to.

The Canons operate outside of the Diocese, they are technically guests at the behest of Paprocki, so I believe he could join them. I would make contact in Paprocki’s Diocese though as Cardinal Cupich has reprimanded the founder for an accusation of sexual misconduct, which there hasn’t been any evidence I’ve seen.

I think it’s a good option and you have a connection to the Canons as I’ve attended their services several times. Paprocki is fairly young, and humbly present in a diocese of small importance. So long as Pope Francis is Pope, I doubt Paprocki will be reassigned anywhere else. They’d be protected in his diocese.

Indeed that may be the case as it was in Bishop Bruskewitz’s diocese. But then they retire and changes come; like the lifting of the excommunication of the Call to Action group without having to denounce their heresies. Sad situation because what was a safe haven only remains so as long as the shepherd is replaced with another of his caliber. That is rare.

We will never ‘win’ this war, Nicholas until Jesus returns to Earth. We will have victories, and we will have defeats. The important thing is to keep the Faith and continue fighting, says the guy that is considering dropping all coverage of the UK on his blog because of recent events, including the Ealing council. Which is at best a travesty. But maybe not, the best Tweet pair I’ve seen lately was this:

Claire Lehmann:

“Who is doing the best writing on civil liberties in the UK right now?”

Answered by: Charles C. W. Cooke, An Englishman who wrote about his American naturalization a few weeks ago:

“Americans”

It is so. My newsfeed this morning is filled with #Alfie, but only from American sites, who are uniformly appalled, at the situation, but even more with the Merseyside police Tweet.

“We’ve issued a statement this evening to make people aware that social media posts which are being posted in relation to Alder Hey and the Alfie Evans situation are being monitored and may be acted upon. Read the full statement here: https://goo.gl/hUZ5zB”

If you are not aware, there are protests happening, in Rome (on St Peters Square) at the British Embassy in Poland, and I would expect there to be here as well.

Alfie appears to be shadowbanned on Twitter, for all the uproar it is not trending, and it also seems posts are disappearing on Facebook, as well. Welcome to the brave new world.

God help the cousins.

Oh, and Scoop, from the USCCB:

We urge all Catholics to join the Holy Father in praying for #AlfieEvans and his family and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted. May the dignity of Alfie’s life and all human life, especially those who are most vulnerable, be respected and upheld.

Pope Francis @Pontifex
Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity shown little Alfie Evans, I renew my appeal that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted.

More and more, in my disgust with reality, I find myself thinking about the changes I wish would be instituted if someone like Jacob Rees-Mogg were our PM.

-Repeal of abortion laws
-Abolition of hate speech laws
-Abolition of tariffs
-Removal of indoctrination from our schools
-Removal of laws that hinder the flourishing of Catholic orphanages and schools and other charitable enterprises
-Constitutional statutes that prohibit the state from meddling in education, the economy, finance, and healthcare

I know, and I like him as well, but he is a bit too much of a party loyalist, I fear. In any case, he would need his party to back him, and I fear the Tories (like our GOPe) is not fit for purpose.

I don’t completely agree with all your points, but if enacted, Britain would thrive.

A bit of cheer though, you’ve noted, as I have, the change in America in the last couple of years, Britain tends to follow us, lately, and our public pressure can be overwhelming, especially to a bureaucratic PM, which is my read on Mrs. May. I think she listens far too much to the civil service, well, if you guys can drain your swamp you’ll be fine, but aside from you, and a few others, most seem to talk the talk well enough, but I’m not seeing a whole lot of walking going on. But maybe some day, talking about it is the first step, and it took us 20 years to get infuriated enough to elect a President. I haven’t given up on Britain (continental western Europe, I have) but it’s a hard long journey. The backlash she’s getting on the common tariff may be the start, but only the start.

But that is a mere 6 years ago, and we have changed much. Jess responded with a post here, which is linked in the comments there, and quoted GKC’s Ballad of the White Horse, and we aren’t as low as Alfred had to go.

“For the end of the world was long ago,
And all we dwell to-day
As children of some second birth,
Like a strange people left on earth
After a judgment day.

For the end of the world was long ago,
When the ends of the world waxed free,
When Rome was sunk in a waste of slaves,
And the sun drowned in the sea.

When Caesar’s sun fell out of the sky
And whoso hearkened right
Could only hear the plunging
Of the nations in the night.”

Yes, we may yet recover. There are enough Brits like Sargon of Akkad to launch a defence of classical liberalism, and businesses are not willing to put up with too much leftism. But I fear for our youth – too much woolly thinking and emotionalism and molly-coddling. No one seems at any stage in their education to have taught them that our values are not for sale. Better to be poor and free than rich and repressed (and frankly, other than the bureaucrats, no one gets rich under socialism – the moment you start to contradict them, you get punished as a ‘kulak’),

This is also why I have a hard time swallowing post-millennialism / a-millennialism – Satan seems to be a bit too free for my liking. If those doctrines are true, it feels like he has already been released for the “short time” to gather Gog and Magog.